Socks are too stressful. There, I said it. And it is about time someone did. Think I’ve finally lost what little sense I had? Maybe. But I stand by my assertion: socks are too stressful. Let me prove it to you . . .

As far as I can tell, socks have a very limited job. They have to provide a cushion/barrier between feet and shoes. Ideally, they should be comfortable, remain securely in place around the feet and whatever portions of the ankles and legs fit in them, and look decent/unnoticeable. And, for any sock engineers out there, I understand that all of this is probably easier said than done. I can imagine design teams sitting around conference tables, drinking lukewarm coffee and workshopping how to provide enough grip to prevent the sock from riding down skinny grasshopper calves like mine but not so much that I lose all circulation below my knees. I understand that this is probably much harder and more serious work than the uninitiated can comprehend. And I want you to know that I appreciate your efforts. But socks are still too stressful.

Because, again, they have a fairly limited job. Yet, for their function, they generate a disproportionate amount of anxiety. One obvious issue here is that, unlike most clothes, socks come in pairs. This creates numerous opportunities for stress.

The famous issue with socks is that one member of the pair is consistently disappearing. Many before me have devoted considerable comedic discussion to the fact that their dryers apparently consume socks or teleport them to other dimensions. This joke has been done before, but a proper discussion of socks must at least mention the fact that, somehow, you just never get as many socks out of the dryer as you put into the washer. In my sock drawer is a small but significant pile of socks whose mates have disappeared. I keep them around in the hope that some lucky dryer load will bring the prodigals home to the sock drawer. 

For me, finding matching pairs of socks is a related but even more frustrating issue. Obviously, matching socks would be relatively easy if no socks ever went missing. But even when socks do go missing, you can theoretically counter the issue of not being able to find matches by simply buying a lot of identical socks. I thought I had stumbled on an even bigger solution when I tried to replace old socks that had gone missing with brand new but identical socks. But that doesn’t work: yes, the new socks look the same, but they are less worn and simply do not feel the same. Meaning that every time you buy socks, you might as well just aim for convenience and not bother trying to match the old socks. What boggles my mind is that so often when you buy a set of, say, six pairs of socks, the socks are not interchangeable: there are six distinct pairs with six distinct patterns. Meaning that, when you find one sock in the laundry pile, somewhere (hopefully in that same laundry pile) there is exactly one match for that sock rather than 11 potential matches. Look, I know variety is the spice of life, but I’m ok minimizing the amount of “spice” I get out of my socks. Just give me a dozen completely interchangeable socks. Please.

Some socks come with an even nastier twist: not only do they have exactly one match, but they are also specific to either the right or left foot. I noticed this with some of my 18-month-old’s socks: they are patterned to look like woodland animals (adorable, I know) complete with ears. But the ears are only on one side of the socks (the side facing out). Meaning that, if you want to feel like a responsible parent, you have to actually pay attention to which sock goes on which foot. This is not a huge deal except that we are talking about an 18-month-old with the attention span of a goldfish with A.D.D. and the squirming power of a caffeinated moray eel. I do not have time to determine which raccoon goes on which foot. Plus, since some of these socks inevitably get lost, I sometimes find myself in the position of mixing and matching. I can’t possibly find two bears, so I have to go with the eclectic look and have a bear on one foot and an owl on the other. Except that the bear and the owl both go on the right foot. So . . . is it too cold for sandals?

Do I have a solution to any of these problems? Not really, no. This is just one of those stressful facts of life. Socks go on the list along with other fan-favorites like death, taxes, telemarketers, election years, and “buffering.” Sure, there are things that the sock designers could do like put ears on both sides of the woodland animals or stop getting so creative and putting multiple designs into the same pack. But, even then, we will still have to deal with the sock tax required of our laundry machines.

So, we arrive back at my original statement: socks are too stressful. You can now move on with the certainty that you will not hear a dumber complaint for the rest of the day.